Never Pee with an Audience
by ggo85
Summary: Wilson has a medical problem which requires the consultation of the eminent Dr. House.


**Title:** Never Pee with an Audience  
**Rating:** K+ for explicit medical description

**Spoilers:** Very mild for Airborne  
**Summary:** Wilson has a medical problem and gets help from House  
**Disclaimer:** Don't own H&W (very sad); don't profit at all from them (really sad)

"You have blood in your pee."

I looked up from my desk to see House standing in the doorway of my office, leaning on his cane.

"You have stubble on your face."

"Personality issue, not health issue."

I sighed and shook my head in frustration. _Never pee with an audience_, is what I thought. What I said was, "Who tattled?"

He cocked his head in a manner clearly intended to show me this wasn't really any of his doing. "The Hardy Boys."

Meaning Chase and Foreman, who'd both been in the bathroom a short time ago when I'd had my little incident. Never pee with an audience.

I went back to scribbling an approval on a biopsy result. "Go away, House."

"Blood in your pee. That probably" – House drew out the word – "means a problem with your kidneys."

I didn't even look up. "Yeah, I took high school biology too. Go away." This time, I said it a little more forcefully.

"Now, wouldn't it be really cool if you knew someone who had, say, a subspecialty in nephrology? Oh, wait, you do. Me."

"That would be really cool if I needed a kidney specialist, which I don't." I looked at my watch. "I have rounds in ten minutes. Isn't it about time for _General Hospital_ anyway?" Ignoring the issue and changing the subject were proven strategies for getting House off my back.

"Is the hematuria transient or persistent?"

House was the one being persistent but I could ignore with the best of them. My eyes stayed on the biopsy report.

"Tell me you've at least done a UA?" he challenged.

Plan A clearly hadn't worked; time to try plan B. "Look, we both know that hematuria in someone my age probably isn't serious. More importantly for you, it's boring. Why don't you go find someone with interesting symptoms to torment?"

"More fun to torment you."

"Not for me."

"Dammit, Wilson." House's blistering tone meant that he was concerned or angry. Or both. And it was a reminder that I hadn't done what, as a doctor, I knew I should have – get my problem checked out. House wasn't about to let this go and, had our roles been reversed, I would have done the same thing.

I raised my eyes to meet his and sighed heavily enough to convince House I was annoyed. "Look, if it doesn't go away, I'll go see Isaac Johnson tomorrow," I said, referring to one of the staff urologists.

"Johnson?" House's tone was dismissive. "He's great – if you need a vasectomy."

I hurt too much to make a joke out of that one. "He's good. Besides, I'm not about to become a pin cushion for your ducklings."

"I'll let Cameron do all the fun stuff," House replied with a leer.

My expression made it clear that I didn't find the suggestion remotely amusing.

"Okay, okay. What if I do everything myself, leave the kids out of it?"

I managed to appear shocked, which wasn't all that hard. "You, actually touch a patient?!"

"I try to limit myself to the pretty ones."

"That definitely rules me out."

House sighed. "Look, Chase will tell Cameron and she'll tattle to Cuddy and she'll make you get checked out. So, it's me today or someone clearly less qualified tomorrow. Take your pick."

-------------------

So, that's how I came to find myself sitting on an examination table, clad only in a sheet from the waist down.

On the way to the exam room, House had collected supplies for a urinalysis and then carefully observed me as I urinated into a sample container.

"Most people consider it rude to watch someone else go to the bathroom," I said.

"Most people think alien abductions are real." He continued watching. "How long have you been pissing blood?"

My admission that I'd ignored my symptoms for a few days earned me a biting reprimand. _Never pee with an audience._

In the exam room, House took my vitals, then palpated my lower back. Sometimes, it pays to use a specialist; he did a more complete kidney exam in less than a minute than most physicians, including myself, would do in ten. It was ironic that House, who avoided touching patients, was always amazingly gentle when he did – at least with me. Which was a good thing because almost everything he did hurt like hell.

"Any recent injuries?" he asked as his hands pressed on my abdomen. "Rough sex with Ruby, that sort of thing?"

"Her name's Robin. And it's none of your business."

"Medical question," he snapped. "Trauma can cause hematuria."

"You don't say?" I sighed. "No trauma."

"Been working out?"

How'd he figure that? "Been running a little." One look at Robin forced me to reconsider my own physique. Too many days and nights in the office eating junk food had started to take their toll on my mid-section. I'd never been much of a runner, but a couple of miles every other night made me feel like I was doing something positive.

House pressed on a particularly tender spot, which caused me to squirm and grunt with pain. House didn't apologize verbally but the look in his eyes told me that, despite his banter, this exam wasn't any fun for him either.

"Hydrating adequately?"

"Yeah," I replied, then added sarcastically, "to the extent my usual combination of coffee, sodas, and alcohol qualifies as hydration."

I'd endured my share of urological exams and performed more than my share, so I wasn't particularly embarrassed or nervous, other than a certain fear of what House might find. I knew the differential for hematuria as well as anyone and, despite my nonchalance, a number of serious causes would have to be ruled out before we could all agree that this was nothing.

"Any problems down here?" House asked.

I stared straight up at the ceiling, wishing this to be over. "The play was great except for the part when Lincoln got shot." Why in the world had I ever agreed to this?

"Come on, differential going on here. Little help?"

"Like what?"

"Like are you needing to pee every five minutes?"

"You've been examining me for more than five minutes."

"What about pain when you're doing it with Ruby?"

"What makes you think I'm—" I squeezed my eyes shut as I felt an erection start to form. Medically, I understood this was a normal biological reaction to the exam and had absolutely nothing to do with sexual arousal. Still, it was happening, it was happening while House was examining me, and it was damned embarrassing. My face flushed and a shudder ran through my body, which only increased my problem, so to speak.

I visualized swimming in ice water, telling Mrs. Rabinowtiz she was dying, talking with Cameron about her dead husband. Nothing worked, and I wanted desperately to sink into a deep hole from which I would never emerge.

I waited with dread for House to make a snide comment but he didn't so much as look at me. For that, I was truly thankful, though I had the feeling this incident wouldn't soon be forgotten. Finally, just when I'd had enough of his poking and prodding, House told me to roll onto my side.

I did so reflexively. Before I could say anything in protest, I experienced the brief discomfort of a rectal exam, then felt the sheet pulled back over me and heard the snap of House pulling off his latex gloves.

"All done."

"That last exam wasn't necessary," I said, sitting up on the table and reaching for my clothes.

House didn't turn around from the sink where he was washing his hands. "You're right. I did it for fun."

"House!"

"You moron," he growled, "you know it's indicated."

Yeah, I did. I pulled on my shorts. Most doctors would have turned their backs; House, now splayed in the room's only chair, felt no such compulsion. "So, what did you find?" I asked hesitantly.

"Nothing remarkable."

"Nothing?"

"Well," he replied, with a slight twinkle in his eyes, "A certain part of the exam was quite remarkable."

"House!"

He raised his hands in mock surrender. "Okay. No masses, no pathology other than the pain."

"So?" I drew out the word in my usual way.

He scribbled in the chart then looked up. "Hematuria plus flank and abdominal pain equals renal calculi. Painful for you, boring for me."

I leaned against the exam table and slowly exhaled. Kidney stones. Not too bad. But . . . "Pain's not bad enough," I said.

"In about an hour, you'll be screaming a different tune."

"What about bladder cancer?"

House gave me a strange look. "You want it to be cancer?"

_I'm an oncologist,_ I wanted to scream. C_ancer is always the first thing I think of_. Instead, I kept my voice measured. "Of course not. It's just that I—"

"Do you know the odds of someone your age developing bladder cancer?"

"Actually, I do."

"Then why in the world would you think . . .?"

"Every day patients defy the odds. Seventeen-year-old with breast cancer; thirty-five-year-old with lung cancer. Every time I have a symptom—"

"You think it's you."

"The oncologist with cancer. The ultimate irony."

"You don't have cancer."

I looked away. The one thing that House valued above all else was his diagnostic expertise, and there was no way to express my fears, irrational though they might be, without wounding his pride. I absently rubbed my back.

"Hurts, huh?" House asked and dry swallowed a Vicodin. "Referred pain," he said in response to my disapproving look.

"Referred pain from me to you? I don't think that's how it works."

Again he ignored me. "We'll do a spiral CT to pinpoint the stones. That should also relieve your fears about cancer. But, if it'll make you feel better, I'll be happy to order a cystoscopy. I'll even do it myself – on the house, so to speak." House looked rather pleased at the prospect.

No way was I letting anyone, especially House, shove a scope up my urethra unless it was _absolutely_ necessary. "CT's enough."

So that's how I found myself lying inside a large machine in radiology. The beauty of a spiral CT is that it's incredibly fast compared to its predecessor, the IVP. This was a particularly good thing in my case because, as House had warned, not only was the pain in my back quickly becoming unbearable but I was now nauseous as well.

As I held my breath and watched the inside tube rotate around me as I passed through the machine, I was sure I had cancer. Sometimes, your body just doesn't feel right and this was one of those times. House didn't believe in premonitions, so I kept this one to myself.

House had ordered more cuts than necessary, obviously to placate me, then stood over my shoulder as I stared at my results on the lightboard. Any idiot – even me – could see that House was right. There were no masses in my kidneys, bladder, liver or anywhere else. No cancer. But there were two small stones at the entrance to my ureter. Renal calculi, just as House had diagnosed. For the first time in several days, I relaxed.

"Satisfied?" he asked.

"Aren't you going to say 'I told you so'?"

"You can make it up to me later." House jabbed at the CT image. "Stones are small, less than five millimeters. Should pass on their own. We can do this one of two ways. You can go home with some good pain meds, drink lots of fluids and wait for them to pass. Or, I can admit you, give you IV fluids, and speed up the whole process."

With the nausea and pain intensifying by the minute, I was all for speeding up the process and all against being admitted.

-----------------------------------

So, that's how I ended up on House's couch with Oxycontin flowing through my body and an IV about to go into my arm. I'd insisted on going home. House accurately pointed out that my motel room didn't qualify as a home and I shouldn't be alone while under the influence of powerful narcotics. Hence, I was destined to spend another night in House's apartment.

I'd wanted to have my IV started in the hospital by one of the oncology nurses. They had more practice than almost anyone and would do it cleanly and painlessly the first time. I wasn't so sure about House.

"When's the last time you did this?" I asked as he set up the IV equipment.

"When men were men and sheep ran scared." He looked away from the tubing. "Besides, you're so doped up on the Oxy that I could miss at least three times and you'd never know the difference."

I rolled my eyes, but House was right. As he'd predicted, the pain had progressed to the point where I could no longer function without drugs. Worried about addiction, I'd protested at the Oxy, but only until the next wave of pain hit. They say kidney stone pain is like being kicked in the balls three times. I voted for at least eight.

House stared at his gloved hands, an evil grin on his face. "Now let's see . . . how again do I do this?"

I reached for the cannula, prepared to insert the IV into myself if necessary.

House batted my hand away. "Oh, ye of little faith," he said, sliding the needle into my vein with an ease that amazed me. Within minutes, he'd taped it into position and hung the bag of fluids. "How's the pain?" he asked, concern evident in his voice.

"Okay, but," my hand went to my stomach, "I think I'm gonna—"

House thrust an emesis basin into my hand and I heaved bile into it. House went into the kitchen and returned with a damp cloth, which I used to clean my face. This sucked. And I knew that, if I were lucky, I'd endure it for at least several more hours. If not, this could go on for days.

House picked up my wrist and checked my pulse. Apparently satisfied, he moved to the other side of the couch and turned on the TV, flipping through channels with the remote.

Several hours later, when I couldn't keep the Oxy down, House switched my painkiller to IV meperidine. It helped, but didn't provide anything approaching complete relief. There was a certain irony in my having the pain and House being in charge of prescribing my painkillers.

"Mmmm," I hissed, grabbing the arm of the couch as a bolt of pain stabbed from my back all the way to my groin.

House looked up from his call with the kids about their newest patient. His eyes narrowed. "Hot date," he said into the phone. "Gotta go." He hung up and stood over me, examining me critically with his eyes. "Demerol's not working," he said and limped over to the box he'd brought from the hospital, returning with a small bottle.

"What's that?" I asked.

"The good stuff."

As an oncologist, I was an expert at treating pain and had no qualms about giving high doses of narcotics to my patients. However, I tended to avoid taking any medicine unless I really needed it. Prescribing for House all these years had taken its toll on my own habits.

I knew what drug House was about to put in my IV line – morphine. I should have told him no, that the Demerol was fine, that I could handle the pain, but it would have been a lie. At that moment, I wanted that morphine, wanted the pain to go away more than I'd ever wanted anything in my life.

House injected it into my IV port. The relief was instant – pure, delicious, sweet.

"Good, huh?" House smirked as he monitored my pulse and breathing. When he was satisfied that the drug had eased my pain and I wasn't about to have a cardiac crisis, he held up another syringe. "Compazine."

"Don't need it." But I did.

"Don't care." And House knew I did. He motioned for me to pull down my sweats.

I gave a petulant sigh and an excessive eye roll, just to piss him off, then did as he'd asked. The alcohol wipe was cold, the injection stung like hell, and I was thoroughly miserable. When he'd finished, House disposed of the syringes, gave me a long look, then sat down again with his remote.

I dozed off only to be awakened by an urgency in my bladder. "House, need you to unhook me."

House freed me from the IV, then handed me a medical strainer in which I was supposed to catch the stones. "Want to mount 'em on the wall," he said.

A few minutes later I emerged from the bathroom, failure and frustration written on my face. The fact the stones hadn't passed meant at least another round of pain, nausea, fluids, morphine and compazine.

House changed the TV channel to a show about women wrestlers. Even with the morphine on board, I was in too much discomfort to protest. Several hours later, House went to bed and I went to the bathroom.

"You're up early," I said when House entered his living room the following morning just after dawn. He was barefoot, his T-shirt hung loosely outside his pajama bottoms, and his hair stuck out at odd angles.

"The early bird gets Wilson high—" He quickly took in the fact that I was lying on the couch, free of the IV. A small Ziploc bag, two stones inside, rested on the coffee table. "When?" he asked, picking up the bag and examining the stones through the plastic.

"About an hour ago."

"Any problems?"

I shook my head. It had hurt when the stones had passed and it still hurt, but a lot less than the previous night.

"Morphine's gonna wear off soon. Want to go with Darvocet or Percocet?" It was a question of which, not if.

"Neither."

"Not an option. It's gonna hurt for awhile."

"It's better than last night. I didn't know pain could be that bad."

House motioned me to move over, then eased himself onto the other end of the couch. He moved without obvious pain and I wondered if he'd already taken his morning Vicodin.

"Pain sucks."

"When I saw you holding that syring of morphine . . . I never wanted anything so much in my entire life."

"To think what I could have extorted from you." House's words lacked their usual snap and one look at his face told me that he too wasn't in the mood to play.

"I've spent my career asking patients to quantify their pain – give me a number. I always thought it was possible. Last night, I realized that you don't know what a 10 really is until you experience a 12."

"And then you wonder if there is a limit."

"You never questioned me."

"I'm really not that interested in the details of your sessions with Ruby."

"My pain level, you jerk."

"Kidney stones hurt like hell." He looked at me. "Don't feel so guilty."

"Guilty?"

"You're obsessing about the fact that you couldn't handle the pain – that you needed the morphine."

"I've taken painkillers before. I prescribe them every day."

"You don't become a pain expert by treating pain, you become one from being in pain. Pain hurts. It's not macho; it's not noble; it's not dignified. All this crap about enduring and stoicism is just that – crap. When you're in pain, you need relief. There's no shame in that."

"Is that what you go through every day?"

"Shame or crap?"

"Pain like I had last night."

"Dunno. Never had kidney stones."

"I meant—"

"I know what you meant." He looked around. "Where's your water?"

House was trying Plan A – ignorance and changing the subject. "Not thirsty," I replied.

"If you're gonna exercise to impress Ruby and don't want to keep developing kidney stones, you've got to hydrate on something other than coffee and beer. And, you need water for the Percocet you're going to take."

"I don't need the Percocet. What I need to do is pee." I stood up.

House pulled himself to his feet and started to follow me.

I turned around. "Where are you going?"

"Coming with you."

As if he hadn't seen enough of my private parts in the last 24 hours. "House, I'm perfectly capable of going to the bathroom on my own."

"Gotta make sure you give me another urine sample and that you're not in pain when you go."

"The only pain I'll feel is you watching me urinate into a small cup. Again."

House held out a pill. "Take the Percocet or I watch you pee."

By now I'd learned my lesson – never pee with an audience. So that's why I intentionally and obviously rolled my eyes, downed the Percocet with a flourish, and grabbed the specimen cup from House's hand. "Stay," I warned.

"Don't share," he called, as I as I made my way down the hallway. "Treat me like a dog. Ruin my morning. See if I care."

I grinned and wondered for about the millioneth time since I'd known House what vortex of insanity led me to call this man my friend. 

_Fin_


End file.
